Emmanuelle Vaast

Representations and actions: the transformation of work practices with IT use

The implementation of new information technology (IT) often aims at transforming work practices. The information systems (IS) literature has detailed numerous cases of reproduction or changes of practice associated with IT use. The literature has also drawn from the practice and structurationist perspectives to suggest that changes in practice are related to changes in organizations. The micro-level issue of how practices change with IT use, however, has so far remained under-explored. This paper investigates this issue and analyzes what makes agents transform how they work with IT and how these transformations may be shared among members of the same work group. The conceptual lens proposed in this paper builds on the emerging literature in IS on the relationships between action and cognition, and introduces the notion of social representations to the IS field in order to clarify these relationships. The adopted conceptual lens helps us to examine a longitudinal case study of the implementation and use of an intranet system in an occupational network. The analysis suggests that practices are reproduced with IT use when agents experience a sustained consonance between actions, practices and representations. Conversely, when agents undergo dissonance between actions, practices and representations, they gradually adapt their practices and representations to reestablish consonance.

Trans-Situated Learning: Supporting a Network of Practice with an Information Infrastructure

This paper investigates the practice-based learning dynamics that emerge among peers who share occupational practices but do not necessarily work with each other or even know each other because of geographical or organizational distance. To do so, it draws on the literatures on situated learning, networks of practice, and information infrastructures, and on insights from a longitudinal case study of the implementation of a Web-based information system used by people working in the field of environmental health. The system was deeply involved in the transformations of local practices as well as relationships between peers. Based on a dialogue between existing literatures and observations from the case study, this research extends the practice-based perspective on learning to the computer-mediated context of a network of practice. To that effect, it proposes a model of what we call trans-situated learning that is supported by the local universality of an information infrastructure whose use becomes embedded with other infrastructures.

Multiple Faces of Codification: Organizational Redesign in an IT Organization

This paper details a longitudinal interpretative field study of an information technology (IT) organization in which a new chief information officer (CIO) implemented a major organizational redesign. The redesign increased the degree of codification in activities of the IT organization so as to control, coordinate, and deliver services more cost effectively to its business clients. We examine different stakeholders views of the change, the implementation processes, and the consequences of the redesign. The case analysis emphasizes specific challenges that designers of support organizations face when increasing the degree of codification. Key implications include the need for these designers to (1) pay as much, if not more, attention to the local organizational context as they do to the external environmental conditions; (2) communicate and negotiate constantly with various stakeholders concerning the appropriate degree of codification and control; (3) be wary of how a strict alignment of all design elements can blind the designer to important, unrecognized issues; and (4) consider that increased codification may help support organizations compete more efficiently with external vendors, but may also ease the process of outsourcing.

O Brother, Where are Thou? From Communities to Networks of Practice Through Intranet Use

Communities of practice are highly situated and, yet, networks of practice supposedly connect them. Assuming the situated dimension of work and identity in communities of practice, how may dispersed agents be connected, and how may the features of communities of practice be extended from the local to the network level? This article proposes that the use of intranets contributes to the interconnections of local communities and to the emergence of a network of practice. It draws on two case studies in which members of local communities used an intranet system to establish communications with remote colleagues in ways that did not merely reproduce their immediate context. The use of the intranet contributed to the mutual reinforcement of local communities, and of the overall network, and to growing complementarities among colleagues at different levels. Conceptually, in a relational perspective, the use of the intranet extended the situatedness of practice.

What Goes Online Comes Offline: Knowledge Management System Use in a Soft Bureaucracy

This paper investigates when and how online practices (i.e. practices of management and use of web-based Information Technology) impact offline practices (i.e. regular work practices and communication patterns) within a bureaucratic environment. A case study of implementation and use of a Knowledge Management System by members of a network of practice within the bureaucratic environment of a public administration is interpreted through a situated learning perspective. This lens helps us to understand the process of emergence of continuity between online and offline practices. Findings indicate that the constructed continuity within the network of practice emerged from a combination of structural changes in the environment and of the involvement of key actors who actively encouraged others to integrate their online practices into their regular activities. The paper helps us to understand the processes of construction of continuity of online and offline practices and the bounded impacts of this continuity within bureaucracies. Such continuity may contribute to the circumscribed emergence of a soft bureaucracy in which professional competences and exchanges are recognized and encouraged, while the structural features of decision making, control, and resource allocation remain unchanged.

Playing with masks: Fragmentation and continuity in the presentation of self in an occupational online forum

Purpose – To investigate the presentation of self of participants in occupational online forums.Design/methodology/approach – Interpretation of more than 300 profiles of participants to a banking‐related occupational online forum based on Goffmans seminal analysis of presentation of self and on the literature on mystification and fragmentation in virtual environments.Findings – Contributors to the occupational online forum adopted one of several main categories of profiles. These categories differed in the degree of detail with which profiles were filled and showed that forum users chose a certain degree of mystification or de‐mystification for their profile. The presentation of self in the online occupational forum was related to the presentation in offline environments, such as in the workplace as well as to other online contexts, such as in electronic chats. The categories of profiles were also associated with strikingly different registration dates and number of posts per year and per contributor.Res...

Tech Talk: An Investigation of Blogging in Technology Innovation Discourse

Web logs, or ldquoblogs,rdquo are fast developing in diverse social and business contexts as influential sources of discourse, knowledge, and community development. In this paper, we investigate an aspect of blogging highly relevant to professional communication: the fast-developing world of ldquotech blogging.rdquo Tech blogs are blogs that focus on information technology innovation and the high-tech industry. We examine nine months of blog entries gathered by an internet aggregator site dedicated to technology news and commentary. Our analysis provides insights on the discourse of tech bloggers and an elite subgroup (ldquoA-list bloggersrdquo), on the discursive practices of this virtual community, and on issues of identity and legitimacy. Our findings hold implications for tech bloggers as well as for managers who need to navigate the expanding blogosphere and for technical communicators who can benefit from using the information that tech bloggers produce.

Grounded Theorizing for Electronically Mediated Social Contexts

Electronically mediated social contexts (EMSCs), in which interactions and activities are largely or completely computer-mediated, have become important settings for investigation by Information Systems (IS) scholars. Owing to the relative novelty and originality of EMSCs, IS researchers often lack existing theories to make sense of the processes that emerge in them. Therefore, many IS researchers have relied upon grounded theory in order to develop new theory based on empirical observations from EMSCs. This article reviews a selected set of papers concerned with grounded IS research on EMSCs. It examines how the authors of these papers handled the characteristics of EMSCs and, in particular, addresses the topics of data collection, data analysis, and theory building. The paper also draws implications and recommendations for grounded researchers interested in investigating these original and fascinating environments in their future work. For example, it calls for grounded researchers on EMSCs to reflect upon the characteristics of their domains of inquiry, to respect the logic of discovery of grounded methods, and to articulate more clearly their theoretical ambitions along the induction/abduction continuum. The paper closes by suggesting promising areas for future grounded research on EMSCs, including taking advantage of the potential for combining qualitative and quantitative analytical methods.

Towards an Ecology of Collective Innovation: Human Variome Project (HVP), Rare Disease Consortium for Autosomal Loci (RaDiCAL) and Data-Enabled Life Sciences Alliance (DELSA).

The Millennium Summit in 2000 established the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were agreed upon by 193 countries and 23 international organizations to combat extreme poverty and other pressing global priorities for human development. In the December 2011 issue of CPPM, Borda-Rodriguez and Huzair present an analysis of the close ties and synergies among the MDGs, pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine. Notably, MDGs promote the creation of collective innovation, a concept with both substantive and instrumental pertinence for the personalized medicine R&D that is currently undergoing rapid globalization. The ethos for collective innovation in global health is also embodied in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, endorsed in 2005 by more than 100 signatories, including donor and developing country governments, regional development banks and international aid agencies.

Investigating the "Knowledge" in Knowledge Management: A Social Representations Perspective

A panel at ICIS 2005 in Las Vegas, NV questioned how social representations (SR) theory could illuminate central questions related to the research and practice of Knowledge Management (KM). The panel included IS researchers who examined different aspects of SR theory and their implications for the understanding of knowledge and knowledge management dynamics. The topics covered in the panel and this report include: the representations of knowledge in the history of KM systems, the role of discursive processes in the emergence of new representations and knowledge, the non-consensual nature of knowledge of various communities, and the potential contributions of a structural approach to SR for situated learning research. This paper elaborates on the presentations of the panel and summarizes the issues raised during its discussion session.